Website “Forestry meets School” (waldtrifftschule.at)

When someone searches for educational worksheets about woodlands or forestry, for example for biology lessons, they can generally easily find some. However, it is often not clear, who made the teaching material, how didactically is the prepared material and if the information is up to date. The internet website “Wald trifft Schule” will in future guarantee to offer technically correct and up to date teaching material for the theme woodlands and forestry.

Despite increasingly variable population groups using woodlands for recreation, there is a negative trend that people are becoming alienated from nature due to a lack of common knowledge towards the woodland ecosystems and forest practices they find themselves within. The main goal of this project is therefore that the very versatile theme forestry should be more integrated in education with high quality materials.

The Austrian Research Centre for Forests and the Association of Austrian Land and Forest Owners along with partners from the forestry and pedagogy sectors, are now combining efforts to bundle and present already often prepared knowledge about forestry.

These materials will now be made accessible for educational purposes from one platform, offering a complex pallet of material ranging from worksheets, booklets, teaching materials to videos.

A further goal of the website is that all possible functions of woodlands and forestry practices will be reflected. This should happen both through the in depth scope of current material and in future, this material being offered in a minimally form too. The central tasks of this educational project is examination on technical correctness and orientation on principles of education for sustainable development. The internet platform was launched in April 2020.